Obama lawyer warned against certifying eligibility

A former U.S. Justice Department attorney who founded the government watchdog Judicial Watch and later Freedom Watch has warned a key Barack Obama attorney that Democratic Party or state elections officials certifying Obama’s eligibility for the 2012 election could be charged with election fraud.

The letter to Robert Bauer, general counsel to the Democratic National Committee, points to evidence of Obama’s ineligibility that would make letters from the DNC to states regarding his candidacy problematic.

“There is therefore no longer any state or national official in the Democratic Party who can escape legal responsibility for ignoring the proof herein provided, and a plea of ignorance of the facts will no longer be possible, especially under the informed legal counsel provided by you (and your state counterparts), Mr. Bauer,” Klayman wrote.

“At the same time that you are receiving this legal analysis, each DNC Executive Committee member – as well as each state Democratic Party chair, secretary of state, and state attorney general – is receiving a certified letter advising them of the legal jeopardy in which they place themselves should they proceed – in light of the facts herein presented – to certify to state or national election officials that Barack Hussein Obama is the constitutionally and legally qualified Democratic candidate for president of the United States.”

Such verifications, if created, would be “perjurious,” Klayman said.

Arizona’s inquiry

The evidence Klayman cites in the letter includes Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett’s highly publicized request of the state of Hawaii to verify that the likely Democratic nominee is a “natural-born citizen.”

WND reported Bennett eventually closed his inquiry without obtaining any pertinent documentation.

Bennett formally inquired of Hawaii for verification of Obama’s birth records, and when he received a statement from state officials announced his inquiry was closed.

“As to whether the president was born in Hawaii, personally I believe he was,” he said. “I actually think he was fibbing about being born in Kenya when he was trying to get into college.”

But Bennett said all clearly was not above board.

“I think he has spent $1.5 to $2 million through attorneys to have all the college records and all that stuff sealed,” Bennett said. “So if you’re spending money to seal something, that’s probably where the hanky panky was going on.”

Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio continues to investigate Obama’s eligibility after determining that the image of a birth document posted online by the White House is fraudulent.

Path to conclusion

Klayman’s path to the conclusion that no one really can know Obama’s eligibility wasn’t complicated.

He did, however, verify that “the information in the copy of the Certificate of Live Birth for Mr. Obama that you attached with your request matches the original record in our files.”

Mr. Onaka undeniably failed to verify that the image posted at whitehouse.gov “is a true and accurate representation of the original record.”

But Klayman explained state law requires Onaka to furnish “in lieu of the issuance of a certified copy, a verification of the existence of a certificate and any other information that the applicant provides to be verified.”

Klayman said the law leaves Onaka with no option and “the only legal reason for Onaka to not verify those facts is if he can’t legally do so. Since he verified that those claims are on the record in the DOH files, the record itself must not have ‘probative value.’

“The only legal reason for not verifying that the posted long-form ‘is a true and accurate representation of the original record in [the DOH] files’ is if it is not. There is no other plausible explanation,” Klayman said.

WND called Bauer’s firm, Perkins Coie, for comment, but there was no response on the holiday today.

Altered

Klayman said the only Hawaii statute allowing birth certificates “to be non-legally binding” is the law regarding “late” or “altered” certificates, which states: “The probative value of a ‘late’ or ‘altered’ certificate shall be determined by the judicial or administrative body or official before whom the certificate is offered as evidence.”

“Unless and until Mr. Obama’s original birth record, on file with the Department of Health in Hawaii, is presented as evidence to a judicial or administrative body or official, it cannot legally be considered to have probative value. In other words … it cannot stand alone without further corroboration, as required by an ‘administrative body or official,” Klayman wrote.

Klayman’s conclusion is that “no one can state with any legal certainty that candidate Obama is even old enough to be president, much less that he meets the exclusively high bar of ‘natural-born citizen’ status, required by Article II, Section I, Clause 5.”

He noted at this point, “No one can legally swear that Mr. Obama is constitutionally eligible to be president; and because the DNC bylaws require the Democratic presidential candidate to be constitutionally eligible, there is also, therefore, no party official who can legally swear that Mr. Obama is the ‘legally qualified candidate’ of the Democratic Party, under its own bylaws.”

Perjury

For a party official to declare Obama eligible “would be to perjure him or herself,” he wrote.

Klayman told Bauer that in 2008 the Hawaii Democratic Party “removed the standard language heretofore employed certifying the ‘constitutional eligibility’ of candidates Obama and Biden.”

“In other words, the state party most keenly aware of Mr. Obama’s existing records would not (and did not) certify their constitutional eligibility,” he said. However, at the same time, “then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, did certify their constitutional eligibility [to present] to election officials in Hawaii, while removing that same standard language [when it was] presented in at least some (if not all) of the remaining states.”

Klayman, whose high-profile legal career has included lawsuits against OPEC, Cuban interests, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez, told WND the letter puts Democrats on notice that certifying Obama’s eligibility without having the actual knowledge opens them up to liability for making false statements.

2008 documents

WND reported early in Obama’s term on the Democrats’ certification of Obama’s eligibility for the 2008 election.

A commentator at Canada Free Press first exposed the Democratic National Committee used two separate forms to affirm Obama’s constitutional eligibility to be president and then said Democrats failed to certify their candidate’s eligibility in 49 of the 50 states.

“In most states,” Williams wrote, “it appears that the DNC never certified constitutional eligibility for Barack Hussein Obama, despite their many claims of proper vetting and certification, all of which we now know to be false.”

Williams posted copies of two documents apparently prepared by Democrats to certify Obama as their nominee for president, one that contains language affirming his constitutional eligibility and filed in Hawaii (where state law requires the specific language) and another omitting the language and filed in the remaining 49 states.

The first includes a verification that Obama and Joe Biden, then candidate for vice president, “are legally qualified to serve under the provisions of the United States Constitution.”

pelosione
A certification for Barack Obama’s nomination that includes the affirmation
Obama and Joe Biden “are legally qualified to serve under the provisions
of the United States Constitution”

The second form obtained by Williams appears identical, but in this one, the verification of eligibility under the requirements of the U.S. Constitution is gone.

pelosi2two
A certification in which the certification of eligibility has been removed